Time is right to shift animal services to the Sheriff's Office

April 10, 2013|Lauren Ritchie, COMMENTARY

Two longtime administrators — the head of Animal Services and her boss — both resigned two weeks ago amid an investigation into whether a prominent Florida rancher underfed his cattle and should be charged with animal cruelty and neglect.

In the middle of the probe, the rancher moved about 100 cows out of Lake County, and Animal Services gave the case to the Sheriff's Office, which is continuing to investigate.

Regardless of the political machinations in play, the situation opens an opportunity to improve Animal Services.

Consider that over the last five to six years, 12 of Lake's 14 cities opted to have the county handle their animal services — without contributing any cash. The calls for service and the work nearly doubled over the last half dozen years, said Marjorie Boyd, who left Friday as director. Yet county commissioners continued to cut employees and money from the budget.

Lake will be struggling this year — again — to balance its budget because of another drop in the combined assessed value of homes and property in the county is expected. But Animal Services can't be ignored anymore — its budget simply must rise to meet demands. Commissioners have unreasonably expected workers in one of the best-run departments to do more than is humanly possible.

However, there is a solution: transfer the desperately underfunded Animal Services operation to Sheriff Gary Borders. Of course, that depends on whether he is willing to take it — along with its pathetic funding.

Such a change would solve a problem while allowing Animal Services to improve operations.

First, disputes about individual cases would end. Investigations would go through a well-established process that is used to look into every other reported crime in the county, and there would be no more questions of political influence.

Second, the Sheriff's Office could more smoothly provide support and backing under one umbrella for Animal Services officers in the field. As it is, Animal Services officers often face hostility and threats. Having a deputy routinely go to difficult calls would improve safety and increase efficiency.

But most important, Borders has something that Animal Services badly needs: free labor.

Convicted inmates in Borders' jail would jump at the chance to work with animals rather than, say, clean up the right-of ways. The sheriff could infuse badly needed man hours into the nuts-and-bolts of cleaning kennels, doing laundry, taking care of the lawn and trees and feeding and bathing animals. Such a program would be good for inmates, who would be contributing to the community and could derive a sense of fulfillment from it.

It would free up trained, paid employees to do more to promote adoptions and to handle jobs inmates shouldn't do, such as administering medication, working with the public and entering data into county computer systems.

If the sheriff were willing to take Animal Services, he should insist on doing so with at least the budget that the operation now has — if not more. Even with free labor, Animal Services has been shamefully neglected.

Commissioners should start talking about the possibility now rather than waiting until the last minute. Last year, they got into serious discussions too late to balance the budget, which forced them to raid their rainy-day savings for more than $2 million.

Shifting Animal Services to the Sheriff's Office wouldn't save anything up front, but it offers a long-term savings that commissioners couldn't get any other way and it offers the chance for a better Animal Services operation.

Lritchie@tribune.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/laurenonlake.